If you’re reading this in August, you’re probably an NBA junkie. Just like us. Even now, there are so many great NBA-related stories being told we at PBT can’t get to them all in our regular posts, so we’re passing a few along in a bullet point format. Enjoy.

• I’ll admit my bias up front — I love Baron Davis. Ask me “who are your five favorite players to watch all time” and Davis makes my list. When he is healthy and in a groove, there is simply nobody like him with a great game IQ and flair. He wrote a brutally honest piece for NBA.com about his story since he had to be carried off the court at MSG in 2012, and it is a must read.

Once I got hurt and carried off that court in 2012 in Madison Square Garden, the Mecca and grand stage of basketball, I told myself it was over. Just forget you ever played and don’t bring it up. If anybody tries to remind you how much you love it, just brush it off as something that you were good at a long time ago. Give yourself amnesia. Tell yourself you hate playing the game and it will be easier to move on.

My grandmother always told me to have something to fall back on. “You’re not going to be able to play forever. You’re a good basketball player, but you are also good at other things. You could get hurt the way you play out there, like your life depended on it.”

The top two teams in FIBA Americas – besides Brazil, which got an automatic bid as host nation – will qualify for the 2016 Rio Olympics. The next three teams, again excluding Brazil, advance to the Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

Canada is definitely a threat this year and next. With such a young team, its future might be even brighter.

Maybe with a little seasoning, Hanlan will eventually make the squad.

Then again, he’ll also have to fend off the next generation of Canadian basketballers, players like Trey Lyles and Jamal Murray.

A few years ago, it would have seemed incomprehensible Canada could afford to cut a player drafted by an NBA team.

This would have been fun to attend, a little showdown between the Seattle Pro AM and the Los Angeles-based Drew League.

It attracted plenty of NBA talent: Jamal Crawford, Zach LaVine, Isaiah Thomas, Stanley Johnson, Trevor Ariza, Baron Davis, Nate Robinson, Malcolm Thomas, Dorell Wright, Bobby Brown and Spencer Hawes were among the ballers. And when you turn those guys loose in a world with no defense, you get a show.

Enjoy, we’re still a couple of months away from NBA games that matter so this can be a little fix.

Isaiah Thomas is a 5-foot-9 point guard. Trevor Ariza is a 6-foot-8 forward. You wouldn’t think it would be possible for Thomas to block someone who’s nearly a foot taller than him, but that’s exactly what happened this week in the Seattle Pro-Am game:

Isaiah Thomas has been working out with Floyd Mayweather this summer. It turns out Mayweather is a huge trash talker, even when it’s someone else’s sport. In a new clip from Showtime’s upcoming All Access series, he talks a big game about beating Thomas at basketball when they play on opposing teams in pickup.